Coach House Books is on the eve of releasing John Golbach's excellent short story collection which I had the honor and pleasure of designing. It's the third book of his I have been able to design. I thought it would be fun to show my process which led to It is an Honest Ghost's final cover:

First I got the brief from the publisher, the title (which was different at the time), and fortunately two stories to get a feel for the collection. So I went to the sketchbook and then pitched a bunch of concepts:

Originaly titled rough sketch for a cut-out idea.

These concepts were well received by the editors and the author but in my email I also mentioned that if they wanted, I could also do a delinquent Hardy-boys cut-out style cover. They all jumped at that idea so another sketch:

70's Spider-Man acid trip concept pitch. Fun but declined.

This version was approved so I moved on to the actual cut-out, larger but to scale:

Some lake side cutting.

The original cutout with original colors which I worked on later in Photoshop to get the blue. We flipped the image here too, worked better this way.

Ghost added and text included.

Titular story's Buick Riviera cut-out. Some Photoshop wizardry, some text made beautiful in Quark and a few more back and forths and a few months later we have ourselves a printed book. A lot of love went into these pages and I always try to show that love and commitment to the words on the covers I design. I'm very happy with the result here. That's it.

I am selling framed paper cutout Trained Masks. I am also doing custom kid's names as a great gift ideas.I won't send framed prints out of town any longer, too many problems for shipping but I can send them unframed. You can see all the trains on my site proper under Trained Masks.

The great up and coming literary journal Cosmonauts Avenue commissioned some art from me for their latest issue. They have some very talented people on board and I was happy to be a part of it. There is a new section on my web site proper with all 27 of the train masks.